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Maternal Memory and Murder in Early-Seventeenth-Century England
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 48, Number 1, Winter 2008
- pp. 111-130
- 10.1353/sel.2008.0003
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article argues that the depiction of murderous mothers in three early-seventeenth-century texts both contests and expands earlier notions of motherhood and female power by highlighting the effects of maternal memory. The pamphlet (1616) and broadside (1624) I examine both stress the disruptive potential of the forgetting of maternal duty, while the play, John Ford's Love's Sacrifice (1633), represents three mothers who remember their maternal duties through murder. All of these texts showcase a "new" mother construct where memory is the centerpiece, emphasizing the power of this ambiguous figure who can both create and destroy.